Battlefield Hardline pushed into 2015

Back in June, the Battlefield Hardline debut trailer revealed that the game would launch on October 21. Today, however, DICE VP Karl Magnus Troedsson announced that the cops-and-robbers shooter has been delayed until 2015, so the studio will have enough time to properly implement the ideas and improvements that emerged from the June beta .

In a new Battlefield Blog post , Troedsson said DICE has been looking into "ways we could push Hardline innovation further and make the game even better" based on feedback from gamers who took part in the beta. "The more we thought about these ideas, the more we knew we had to get them into the game you will all be playing," he wrote. "However, there was only one problem. We would need more time. Time that we didn't have if we decided to move forward with launching in just a couple of months."

The studio thus elected to move the game into early 2015, while it focuses on "multiplayer innovation," improving the single-player story mode and, perhaps most important of all, doing everything it can to ensure that it's stable at launch. "We have learned a lot from Battlefield 4 , are continuing to learn from our Community Test Environment and will learn more from another Hardline beta," Troedsson wrote. "More time allows us to surface issues that the team can attempt to fix prior to launch."

The delay could also be seen as evidence that Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson was serious about his promise to implement a " fundamental shift " in how it makes games: In June, he said the publisher would maintain a greater focus on quality control throughout the development process and, more to the point, be willing to delay a game if it proved necessary.

Andy covers the day-to-day happenings in the big, wide world of PC gaming—the stuff we call "news." In his off hours, he wishes he had time to play the 80-hour RPGs and immersive sims he used to love so much.